Friday, April 19, 2013

Irabor: Searching for peace in the Ilorin graveyard

Irabor

The crisis within
Nigerian Premier League system is certainly the brainchild of the office of the
minister of sports, Bolaji Abdullahi (for this purpose, permit me to refuse to
address him as a mallam).

A mallam is a learned,
schooled, well-educated, wise cleric. Our friend and colleague, the minister,
does not understand too many things about sports.

I love him for one
thing, he pretends like a sciolist to know the terrain than those whose trade
it is. He speaks good English with articulate gesticulations but there it
stops.

Confusion
break bone: When
Fela Anukulapo-Kuti sang that song, did he have this minister in mind? What is
it that Hon. Nduka Irabor has to say to Commissioners and Directors of Sports in
the Ilorin National Council of Sports?

Clearly, I repeat here
like I told a select audience some days back, that, having listened to Hon
Nduka Irabor in Abuja and the transcript of all he told SWAN in Lagos, I
believe he has a good vision for Nigerian football. QED.

They goofed. Several
ways they faltered and stumbled had created a bad market and brand on their
hands before they started.

1.FIFA
in 2004 when we were fighting Ibrahim Galadima wrote a letter and clearly
stated the limits of the powers of the league and that of the FA;

2.Irabor’s committee transmuting from IMC to LMC without
recourse to club owners (the Congress of the NPL) is outrightly faulty;

3.That Aminu Maigari of the NFF signed the incorporation
papers of the LMC as NFA is absolute fraud. It is criminal. I shall in days
proceed to ask Maigari to be prosecuted for that fraud. How?

4.Maigari’s Board swore to an affidavit before Justice Okon
Abang where they deposited NOT to be NFA again but NFF. How come he signed the
papers as NFA? There was criminal intent to defraud the Nigerian public.

Minister Bolaji
Abdullahi has his own agenda. He is out to destroy the Nigerian Premier League.
I can swear to this. Or how do you explain the desperate search for peace in
the graveyard by dragging Irabor to the National Council of Sports?

Has Abdullahi finished
the issues of the open National Sports festival which is supposed to bother the
Commissioners and Sports Directors? That decision will make the festival a case
of Delta state versus others. Simple.

Two, I exposed in
November 2012 the minister’s move which he nor his office till date has denied
making my allegations true. I repeat what I then wrote:

Usurpation of NPL in a
foreign deal:
On the 20th October, Aminu Maigari and the Chairman of the Technical Committee,
Chris Green, travelled to London to broker a deal with IMG Limited in the
UK on behalf of the Nigeria Premier League, (NPL). One of them has denied this
though but our source insist they are not telling the truth. Is the deal not
true? It was minister’s move

As close as their
lackey, Victor Baribote is to them, the duo went on the trip without the
knowledge of the League Board.
However, the two top shots lied officially that they were going to get a new
jersey for Super Eagles against the African Nations cup in South Africa.
Neither does any other board member of the illegal NFF know of the true intent
of the London trip?

Two weeks
ultimatum:
Did the club owners not give the LMC two weeks to call a congress? What
proactive moves are being made to tackle these conflicts? Public speaking will
conflagrate relationship.

My dirty third eye is
seeing two league bodies in tango for the soul of our professional football. I
see the club owners sticking by the FIFA statutes to sack LMC. Since LMC claims
to have FG’s backing they may dare the club owners. So, what then happens?

Let’s wait for Irabor’s
Ilorin treatise to bamboozle commissioners and the Directors of sports. Will club
owners bulk or act to sack the IMC turned LMC? If this happens, why would
Irabor have addressed the meeting in Ilorin?

Or are the Commissioners
to be charged to IMMEDIATELY plot another way for a new crisis in Nigerian football?
Was this why the meeting was taken to Ilorin in the first place? Many questions
to ask.